- This is only a surprise to HN, because all the other threads about the corrupt US regime have been flagged before. I guess now is a good time as any to start paying attention. Who would've thought that attention is all you need?
- When you say "HN", do you mean you? Who else was surprised? The place is full of people saying how bad the US is, how corrupt the government is, how terrible CEOs (particularly Altman) are, late stage capitalism, etc., etc.
- [flagged]
- 25M isn’t even that much money. Not only are they whores, they’re cheap whores.
- It’s a lot of money for a “what have you done for me lately?” scenario
Like, this is opex
- Quite tangential, but this reminded me of a line from Human Target:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6tqvzt?start=872&mute=fal...
"I'm sorry, you... You think I'm a prostitute?"
looks at offered cash
"A $40 prostitute?"
- Cheap or not doesn’t matter.
Sir Winston Churchill supposedly asked Lady Astor whether she would sleep with him for five million pounds. She said she supposed she would. Then he asked whether she would sleep with him for only five pounds. She answered,"What do you think I am?" His response was, "We've already established that; we're merely haggling over price."- Marcus Felson, Crime and Everyday Life, Second Edition, 1998
- I think it does matter and this quote is always flaunted like it's some deep insight but it intentionally ignored nuance. An amount you can comfortably retire on is way different than $5.
We love to pretend humans have unflinching morals but they don't
- On the other hand, immoral people would try to convince you that anybody would kill their own mother for the right price.
- “We” also love to pretend that every, (or even most), humans who could break laws, or common moral boundaries in order to cash out actually do that.
I think that’s a fallacy, too.
- I imagine the number of people who would do it if they theoretically knew they had no chance of getting caught is different than the number of people who actually do it. I don't disagree with your conclusion about how many people do, but knowing how many people would lie, cheat, steal, or murder their way to wealth but don't due to sufficient deterrent is useful knowledge in how to structure a society.
To be clear, I'm not making any claims about whether this is a large proportion or not, because I have absolutely no idea (and I have doubts this would even be possible to calculate with even a remote degree of confidence purely via philosophical discussion). If anything, some sort of study that provides evidence that this number is lower than expected would be a strong argument against typical "tough on crime" policies that are often popular with people who express concern about human nature in this regard.
- Agreed; an equally flawed assertion.
In my view we have some unflinching morals, some more flexible ones, and some you don't adhere to at all, and which is which tends to differ between people.
I personally don't believe in non-religious ontological good because of this aspect of human nature.
- > I think it does matter and this quote is always flaunted like it's some deep insight but it intentionally ignored nuance
There are people that wouldn't do it no matter the amount. Not for billions. Not for a trillion. And that's why no matter how rich the other party, there are people to whom they simply aren't rich enough.
"No" is the most powerful word in the dictionary. And when some people say no, they really mean no. And no amount of money can change that.
And most filthy, corrupt, bribed politicians and corrupt public servants out there know that fully well: they feel filthy and miserable because they know there are people out there with moral and ethics.
Additionally, there are people who honestly really don't give a fuck about money (it's not my case): so they'll say no not because of particularly high moral or high ethics, they'll say no just because they enjoy their simple life.
Honestly it's a sign of low moral and low ethics to believe that anyone can be bought out and that it's just about the amount.
- That's something that has bothered me about this entire administration, particularly the bizarre and disturbing involvement of the Diablo-cheating billionaire.
Everyone knew that a lot of politicians have been for sale, but I didn't realize how cheaply they were for sale. Musk able to buy his way into being in charge of an idiotic department with basically no regulation while still being allowed to CEO like five companies, and he did it for like $100 million. That's a lot of money, more than I'll ever be worth, but it's way less than I would think it would cost to buy the presidency, in charge of billions (and maybe trillions?) of dollars of sales and contracting.
- the US is like a new born deer against battalion of ninjas when it comes to corruption.
Decades of believing we are blessed with some sort of perpetual exceptionalism has made the American people not only susceptible to corruption but actively unknowingly promote it. Propaganda has convinced them to invite it into their house and let it know where all your money is and your bank account information.
- In this context they're not the whores, they're the johns. Trump / the PAC would be the whores, but what else is new?
- A whore doesn't have to charge any given john very much when they can service a large number of them.
- It's a loss-leader. Once the patronage system has solidly taken hold, then they raise the prices. Our only consolation is that the fascist-supporting techbros are going to be victims of their own enshittification dynamic - they think they're paying customers, but they're actually the product. The autocracy will continue to increase its meddling to maintain its own political legitimacy. Moldbug's enlightened benevolent monarch who needn't care about politics is a pipe dream.
- This is one of the few interpretations that make sense of this timeline at this time. I'd be cautious since it's still speculation. But discovery is going to be interesting.
- This interpretation is kinda obvious to anyone who has seen similar schemes in other countries. It‘s done almost by the book, except there‘s no criminal case against Anthropic management or shareholders, because USA is not yet there.
- Such high levels of corruption are not usually called "scam"
- The scam part is the fiction perpetrated on the American public that there was a bona fide dispute with Anthropic.
- I’ve always heard it called “business as usual”
- I still prefer "Scam", "Business as usual" Altman doesnt have the same ring to it...
- > In capitalism, the market decides.
> In oligarchy, connections and donations decide.
> but after Brockman had donated 25M to Trump’s PAC
Sounds like they paid Trump and the government, can it get more capitalistic?
- In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.
This HST quote seems severely outdated by now. They have already been caught, committed all the sins of stupidity and some more. All of it to the clapping mob of people who yearn for some kind of social revenge.
And it’s happening everywhere these last years.
Who could possibly know we have so many wife beaters?
- Not a week goes by without me thinking "what would HST have made of THIS fresh bullshit, if he were alive today"
- The only human to authorize a nuclear attack…
- I've said it a million times, but I'll repeat it.
There are a lot of conspiracy nuts like Alex Jones, and the amusing thing to me is that there is a conspiracy of elites who are exerting large amounts of unelected control of the government, and who are actively working to keep you down to enrich themselves, and it's not even a secret.
We call these people "billionaires", and at this point they don't even bother hiding it. Trump had a streamlined bribery system with his stupid cryptocurrency and being in charge of a publicly traded company while in office, Musk bought his way in so he could be in charge of a new department and start defunding any organization that has ever tried to investigate him, and there are hundreds of examples.
Instead morons like Alex Jones will go on the radio and blame lizards or something, and then his listeners will take that and then start blaming Jews or Mexicans, while cheering on the actual conspiracy that's making their lives terrible.
- Not to mention trafficking and raping children
- Some people just don’t want to hear it no matter what. Not because they are unusually stupid or inherently evil but because they feel severely hurt by the societal changes and left out. Anything that gives a hint of hope of reverting things to be the way they were is justified and no price is too high.
They can steal as long as they are our thieves.
To get through to these people you have to validate their deep fears. Not just say - shut up, you are stupid, vote for me.
- > To get through to these people you have to validate their deep fears. Not just say - shut up, you are stupid, vote for me.
Everyone says this kind of stuff, but honestly I don't think I agree. Everyone says that you have to be nice to these people to attract them, but that doesn't seem to have been the case for people like Trump or any of the other demagogues that have popped up in the last decade or so.
These people are decidedly huge assholes. Trump is the most easily offended person I have ever seen, and whenever anyone ever goes against him he will go on his stupid Twitter clone and give a diatribe about how they're not true Americans and they're radical left and they're traitors and a bunch of other bullshit.
People like John McCain and Mitt Romney tried to meet people where they are and negotiate, and both of them failed to win the presidency. Trump went on stage, rambled a bunch of incoherent nonsense about how Mexico not sending their best or trying to brag about having a giant cock and he's been elected twice now.
I'm not convinced that being polite to these conservatives is actually the right path forward. I tried being polite to my grandmother when we would discuss these things and instead of reflecting on her believes she's fully fallen down the QAnon rabbit hole and has actively said to me that my wife should be deported.
- PS: If openly bribing a crony gov to cancel your competitor is now the de-facto standard of making business in the US, I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment. When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent.
- It's bizarre seeing the outright bribery.
A lot of things that people call "bribery" is really just ensuring that your preferred candidate gets in office. You couldn't give money directly to the candidate for personal use. Donations went to the campaign of the guy who already agreed with you. The FEC used to take a dim view of outright pay-for-service, even dressed up.
This is new. And now people need to decide how they feel about that. They get one chance to say "no, that's not how we do things." Even if the administration suffers a blow this November, if they hear that this is mostly acceptable to their base, it will be what every politician does from here on.
- >A lot of things that people call "bribery" is really just ensuring that your preferred candidate gets in office.
Having a preferred candidate you give money to is already bribery - whatever the law says. You fund your favorite pony to get the power. They then scratch your back or lend a sympathetic ear.
- Simply spending money to get someone you like elected isn’t bribery.
To the degree great inequality leads to this being decisive in elections, it is a corrupting influence, but the term for it is still not “bribery”.
But when a presidential candidate tells oil companies they should donate because he is going to help them, that’s solid bribery.
When companies pay to “settle” ridiculous accusations, or “donate” to a president’s causes, while their mergers or other business legal issues depend on an openly pay-for-play president’s goodwill, that’s solid bribery.
The country’s policies, discipline, reputation and competence (economic, diplomatic and political) are being sold off for a tiny fraction of what their future adjusted value is worth.
- IANAL, IIRC: SCOTUS has very narrowly defined bribery as explicit quid pro quo. And sometimes not even then.
- You recall correctly.
And they did so, so they could take bribes with no consequences as long as they take them the right way.
- Trevor Noah pretty much nailed this in the first Trump admin:
- > When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent.
No, it's not inevitable. What you've described is the way a lot of countries work, such as China. China attracts plenty of capital and external talent, including people from other countries such as Taiwan and the United States. You have be all-in on the CCP's rules, though.
Vietnam works in a similar way. Untold billions of FDI in the past 20 years from Japan, the U.S. and China. Talk with top executives there, and you'll frequently find close connections or family ties with leaders in Hanoi.
- > If openly bribing a crony gov to cancel your competitor is now the de-facto standard of making business in the US
It very clearly is, the present AI instance is far from the only recent case.
> I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment.
They evaluate the propensity and ability to profitably engage in open corruption the same as they evaluate other capacities of the company. “Secure” isn't a binary category, and the risk here is much like any other risk.
> When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent.
That is the expected result of increasing perceived risk. yes, probably one of those “slowly and then all at once” things.
- >I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment.
Investors just care for the returns. As long as they can identify and bet on the side doing the bribing, they're fine...
- Bit melodramatic. The US still has the most talent, most capital, and best property protections of anywhere in the world. Name a country that (1) doesn't have any quid-pro-quo system with the govt, and (2) has pro-growth pro-capitalist policies.
- >I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment.
2025 was also the first year that the majority of stocks were traded off-market (i.e. hedgie darkpools, no public price discovery).
----
Hope ya'll bought your gold before Monday.
#RemindMe2days [gold@5290USD, this post]
- Trades in dark pools still get published to the consolidated tape; they're still part of price discovery. What's "dark" about them is that you don't see the order book, but people break up large orders into smaller orders to disguise their order size in lit markets too.
- >2025 was also the first year that the majority of stocks were traded off-market (i.e. hedgie darkpools, no public price discovery).
Do you have any sources for that?
- the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent
To where?
- Anywhere offering opportunity.
I'm in Europe, I'd like to see it come here. The news I see suggests China's ahead of us in this race, but I don't know if that's for all talent, or if it was just an artefact of a lot of Chinese people in the US on work visas returning home.
Or indeed whether the news about China doing well here was real or hallucinated by an LLM.
- If engineers in the US (i.e. me) want to find work in Europe, what can we do? I know that’s a googleable question but honestly I can’t help but think that there cannot be any European country that would want me and my family.
Immigration is hard.
- It is hard.
I moved to Germany in 2018, and only just this month reached B1 level in the language; and that was a pre-Brexit move so I don't need to care about visa.
The EU has a "blue card" scheme modeled on US green card: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Card_(European_Union)
If language is your biggest barrier, pick a country whose language you already speak. As this clearly includes English, Ireland if you want specifically EU, and UK if you just want the continent (mainly London, but I spent a long time in Cambridge tech sector).
Germany may still be an option even without being a native speaker (depending on your skills), but with all the difficulty everyone has today with AI messing with job hunting, get the contract before considering a move.
- Not that hard if you are in young to middle years and have any job experience. I asked Perplexity "If an American citizen, a trained engineer with some experience, desired to work abroad in the EU or an English-first nation, what are some good websites to check?"
I suggest you do the same -- the reply lists a dozen promising sites.
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/if-an-american-citizen-a-tr...
- Europe is nice this time of year
- > I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment.
It’s the best investment - just bribe your way to contracts
- To summarize all nepotism indicators posted here by various people:
- The Kushner family has invested in OpenAI.
- OpenAI uses Oracle cloud. Ellison is close to Trump.
- Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan (the “spy sheikh") has invested $500 million in World Liberty and is also invested in OpenAI.
- Altman is a protege of Thiel, whose Palantir integrates the external AI at the Pentagon.
- The scam occurs right before the Iran war starts. The Groq sale scam (where Trump Jr.'s 1789 Capital bought shares just months before the sale) occurred right before Christmas. So both were timed to be overshadowed by larger events or holidays.
- Don't overlook the media consolidation under Bari Weiss.
- Sweet, excellent idea for the government to tie itself to a bubble.
If it doesn't pop while Trump's in office, his successor will inherit this mess, bubble will pop, and that person will have to deal with managing the fallout.
The time to lock-in gainful employment is now (if you can).
- A bubble is just a great opportunity to pass more money to yourself and your friends.
- And then hoover up assets after the bubble pops.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
- "On the very same day that Altman offered public support to Amodei [CEO of Anthropic], he signed a deal to take away Amodei’s business, with a deal that wasn’t all that different. You can’t get more Altman than that."
- He's young, he's got enough time to outdo himself.
- ਚੋਰ ਮਚਾਏ ਸ਼ੋਰ
- I'll try not to be too flippant but... he thought the US ever _wasn't_ an oligarchy?
- Flippant be hanged! IMO, it all started with W Bush, who put the icing on that cake by invading Iraq based on a televised lie. He was "sneaky" but the current administration doesn't even try to sneak. The mid-terms may be our final chance to save our nation.
- Colin Powell must be shaking vials of yellow powder in his grave right now.
- I was scratching my head trying to work out the difference between the deal with anthropic, and the deal with openai.
I asked gemini.
The one detail was that the contract enforced the law with anthropic, but with openai it was legal uses.
Sounds like hair splitting, but this article explains the real story.
- A lot of rightfully righteous anger here. I'm amused that this wasn't the response when semiconductors from Taiwan were exempted from tarrifs. There, the bribe was much smaller...
- The corruption is never-ending, but I think with this case people were especially struck by some of the details like OpenAI claiming their "red lines" were exactly the same as Anthropic's.
Not even trying to justify the switchover would have raised less eyebrows than giving it a clearly nonsense justification.
- > In oligarchy, connections and donations decide. It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter
Transitioning? That happened post WW2. How many more wars in the Middle East do we need to convince people?
Though, I think it’s hard for Marcus’ generation to see this. Odd given Vance’s connections to Thiel et al.
- > Transitioning?
To be fair, there has been a notable recent shift in the sense that nobody even tries to hide what is going on anymore.
We've moved beyond manufacturing consent to ass out corruption on full display, "try to stop me."
- > In capitalism, the market decides.
> In oligarchy, connections and donations decide.
> It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter.
One has to wonder on what planet Gary Marcus has lived so far.
- In his defence, previously money won, rather than bribing someone to get a competitor nuked from orbit.
Sure you could smear an opposition company, but just straight bribing the government is new, at this scale
- There was a long stretch where money would be more of a deciding factor than who you know, and I think we're crossing the threshold where who you know is becoming all that matters.
- > In capitalism, the market decides.
> In oligarchy, connections and donations decide.
> It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter.
I thought this was already pretty clear - since Elmo bunny hopped on Trump’s rally stage
- "Is transitioning to oligarchy"? Really? I don't see how present continuous is justified here.
It has always been an old boys club where connections and hand greasing decided it all. President Trump is the product of this system, not its creator or builder.
- > but after Brockman had donated 25M to Trump’s PAC
> In capitalism, the market decides.
> In oligarchy, connections and donations decide.
Author is confused about what Capitalism is. It worked exactly as expected, Capital used itself to advance it's own needs - maximizing (own) growth.
Capitalism is not about markets, it's about Capital.
There is a reason why lobbying is an accepted practice in one of the most Capitalistic countries in the world, and generally forbidden in Socialist EU.
- Which prominent economist has argued that bribes are an essential part of Capitalism?
- Someone came up with the "invisible hand of the free market" theory and become quite famous so I'd say we can add our own crackpot theories on top, apparently they don't have to be very well researched to stick around
- > generally forbidden in Socialist EU
This is one of those cases where you wish your critics were right. One in 40 people in Brussels is a lobbyist, but apparently it's forbidden.
- Very kind of you to only pick one error in the parent post to critique.
- I've been working with UK/EU lobbying data in recent months, so that's the one I felt competent to pick on. I thought I'd leave the nature of capitalism to someone else.
- What does this have to do with AI capabilities specifically?
This is literally the politics of running massive business interests, which I understand is relevant for technology and everything…
… but isn’t Gary Marcus’s whole game that AI is not capable and people are wrong/lying about AI tech capabilities?
I feel like this is a handy moment for Gary where he can say he could basically ignore all of his previous claims (because they’re all technically wrong) and shift into “AI is bad for society because it’s more crony capitalism” or something kind of muddy argument.
- What's your argument here? He's not allowed to discuss crony capitalism because you imagine that he thinks LLMs suddenly became reliable.
- It’s a comment about who Gary Marcus is presenting himself as
My intention is for other people to think what I believe which is Gary Marcus is a hack and has no business being listened to with respect to technical evaluation of AI because he’s not technically competent enough to do. The existence of his polemics waste everybody’s time and generally waste resources like we’re wasting right now.
His entire schtick has been as the debunker in chief of claims of AI capabilities
If you actually look at his polemics they increasingly have nothing to do with his original argument because his original argument not only is flawed but is ignorant of the technical capabilities
- Then disassemble the argument the author is making and show people an alternative reality based take if you want to be taken seriously.
- It's only a matter of time before an OpenAI killer drone accidentally targets Gary Marcus and Scam Altman says "oopsie".
- [dead]
- I wouldn't be surprised if after some time we found out that Amodei signed the same deal as well, and then he will go on a press tour about how he was forced to do it.
- Let that sink in!
- I think he is right here, but it is interesting to see that Gary Marcus is transitioning to AI too (writing style...)
- > But here’s the kicker > Let that sink in
The biggest tell for AI writing is just being AI adjacent. I've started avoiding reading AI articles here because (surprise) they all feel like a chatGPT transcript.
- Is this a blog post or someone's notes for a blog post?
- It's a short and quick blog post. Bloggers used to do that once in a while (before twitter made it the only allowed mode of expression to please the advertisers.)
Other posts from G.Marcus are much longer. Go read them, but be prepared for some "adversarial thinking" if you strongly believe in the scaling hypothesis. Might border on "bubble popping ". You're all for free speech and the free market of idea, so it won't be a problem.
However, he has a low threshold for bullshit. And SamA is probably not getting any higher in his esteem this week.
- LOL. Are you mistaking writing critique for some childish form of disagreement on the issues?
- I think, in the middle of all the grandiose proponents of "AGI is coming any time soon", "AI is going to cure cancer", "LLMs will fix climate change", "ChatGPT will bring back your estranged lover", etc... Some critique has to be a bit harsh. "The data center has no clothes", in a way ?
I agree that the author gets a bit childish when he goes into name dropping of people who used to disagree with him and don't any more - there's probably some background drama that I'm not particularly interested in.
Still. I believe having both Gary Marcus and Dwarkesh Panel in a timeline, in chronological fashion, whiteout and algo to tell me who's right, is one of the perks of substack.
- "But I believe in fair play. This wasn’t that."
Anthropic’s Super Bowl ads weren't fair play either.
- Why not??
- Because the models aren't going to be recommending products in their conversations. The ads will be visually separate from the model's output.
- Seems pretty unimportant and inconsequential though because LLMs don't work anyway because they aren't logic-based symbolic AI, right?
- I know you trying to mock Marcus, but the reality is that all the big LLM providers have been shifting to integrating symbolic reasoning into their models for over a year now since they noticed that scale-alone is a dead-end. Also DeepMind's AlphaFold, which won the nobile price, is neuro-symbolic AI - so I think both of those points very much justify Marcus's long criticism of pure subsymbolic LLM "AI" as a path to real causal reasoning.
- This https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230 is the simplest and most logical explanation as to what happened. The disagreement was over who would be the arbiter of "lawful usage" of the technology, the US government or Amodei.
- No, that’s not accurate at all, and in case you are genuinely confused:
1. Anthropic should be free to sell its services under whatever legal terms and conditions it wants.
2. The Pentagon should be free to buy those services, negotiate for different terms, refuse to buy those services, and terminate contracts subject to any termination clauses.
You may or may not agree with what the Pentagon wants to do, but if things had stayed there, there would be no real issue.
The problem is that the Pentagon is trying to bury Anthropic as a company, calling it a danger to the United States because it exerted its non-controversial right in (1).
Any “explanation” that doesn’t address that is confused itself or trying to confuse the issue.
I leave it to you as to which category the linked source falls under.
- 1. Agree
2. Agree
> The problem is that the Pentagon is trying to bury Anthropic as a company, calling it a danger to the United States because it exerted its non-controversial right in (1).
My take is that the DoD very much wanted to continue using Claude. However, Amodei refused to budge on relinquishing final say over Claude usage. The DoD took this as a personal offense (how dare this guy, does he know who we are, etc) and lashed out in retaliation. The whole sequence of events makes sense when viewed under this lense.
- That is way too reactive for these people
It is more likely the plan purposely gave Anthropic terms it knew it would not accept to give a certain public perception. OpenAI was always going to be the recipient, but for reasons unknown, they could not make the deal directly, and had to create the perception that they had no choice.
- > Amodei refused to budge on relinquishing final say over Claude usage.
So did Altman. The terms of each company’s agreement with the DoW are roughly the same when they come out of the wash.
“Mr. Altman negotiated with the Department of Defense in a different way from Anthropic, agreeing to the use of OpenAI’s technology for all lawful purposes. Along the way, he also negotiated the right to put safeguards into OpenAI’s technologies that would prevent its systems from being used in ways that it did not want them to be.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/technology/openai-agreeme...
- > However, Amodei refused to budge on relinquishing final say over Claude usage.
And that's 100% acceptable and legal. They have the right to do that. And DoW can then turn around and say "no deal". And that's 100% acceptable and legal.
So Hegseth going above and beyond and lashing out on the People's behalf like a butthurt child is unwarranted at best, and should definitely be illegal if it's not already.
- I agree, my point is simply that Hegseth lashing out over Amodei's resufal is more plausible than a grand conspiracy to move to OpenAI (while simultaneously locking themselves out from Claude).
- Do you actually believe things this administration says? Is there some kind of drug that makes this possible?
